sheercraziness:

**Disclaimer: that last post was an anomaly. I’m back to writing far too long posts.**

Don’t get me wrong, I find my program interesting and useful. I have lots of reasons to love being in engineering too. It’s more what some people use this program as an excuse for that leaves me disgusted.

Too many people think that you are smarter by being in engineering. Why? Because it took higher minimum grades to get into your program? Lots of people chose a program that interested them, regardless of the entrance average. Kudos to them, for doing what they want, not doing what puffs up their ego. Besides, high grades aren’t a sign of intelligence, they are an evaluation of your ability to write exams. Grades aren’t a sign of social ability, potential, work ethic, or anything else that could be far more useful in a work setting. Engineering may have a larger course-load and a lot more assignments, but does that make the program harder? I would argue that it makes the program different. How many people in engineering could pass a course where 90% of your mark comes from essay-writing?

I remember once having a discussion with somebody about the “engineering spirit” at Waterloo. About how they hated it, and how it just seemed to put everybody else down. But I disagree - I think Waterloo has very little engineering spirit. People don’t celebrate their engineering siblinghood like they do at Queen’s or Toronto. Waterloo engineers, or at least the ones that demonstrate this “spirit”, are just arrogant. They aren’t spirited, they are just proud to not be in what they consider a lesser program. I think it’s entirely possible to have spirit without arrogance, and (sadly) it’s possible to have arrogance without spirit. I am ashamed that Waterloo Engineering can bring out this false pride in enough of the engineering students to affect cross-faculty relations around the school.

I enjoy my program. I’m in the program I am because I find the material interesting. I can honestly see me using the knowledge I gain to help the world. Chemical engineering will help me to improve the society around me. But I worry that so many of my classmates don’t share this view. They suffer through material they dislike to end up in a cushy job with promotion potential and a nice salary until they die. They plan on working so hard that they don’t have time for kids, but it’ll be OK because they’ll only be with a spouse for 3 or 4 years at a time anyway, since they won’t have the required time to keep a marriage going. (For those who don’t know, I’m cynical.)

And that’s the biggest reason I hate my program. For every person who loves what they’re taking, there’s a dozen who are doing it for all the wrong reasons. And really, each and every Arts or other faculty student who loves what you’re studying, you should in a way feel sorry for the Engineering student. They hate what they’re taking, they have no personal goals other than making money, and they resolve that insecurity by bragging about the program they’re in for no reason other than that other people do it too. Whatever you do, try not to let them get to you. Remember you actually like what you’re taking. Sometimes I envy you people who can take exactly what courses you want, not the mandatory courses required to eventually get to what you want to take.

In the end, I realize that I’m in engineering because my brain works in a math/science sort of way. I get engineering. I happen to do very well on final exams. I have a really, really hard time with anything that requires me to be visual. I recognize that there are areas of my life that I will always lose out to people who have minds that work in different ways. And I wish that I could somehow make all the other engineers out there that act dumb realize just how dumb they are. Just how frustrated I am that they label me as arrogant to all sorts of people who’ve never met me before. That they are hiding from the fact that they don’t enjoy their program by taking down everybody who’s not in their program.

(And I haven’t even started on the misogyny present in engineering.)